Maye Musk, who has risen to fame as an older model ("Who knew things would take off when I went silver?!"), grew up in Pretoria, South Africa, regularly hearing the Afrikaans saying "A farmer makes a plan." In A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success, she lays out how having an escape plan enabled her and her three young kids (one of whom is tech entrepreneur Elon) to flee her abusive husband. And in 1990, it was having a plan that gave her the chutzpah to move to Toronto with her teenage children to serve their budding professional interests.
A Woman Makes a Plan accommodates these and other stories in chapters bundled into five sections: Beauty, Adventure, Family, Success and Health. In "Success," Musk describes walking her first couture show at age 67 after decades of less glamorous modeling work. (She used to tell people, "I'm the Sears housecoat queen.") In "Health," she outlines her philosophy on nutrition. (Musk has two master's degrees in the field.) As one might guess, she has no truck with fad diets and weight-loss tricks: "You don't need a pill. You need a plan."
A Woman Makes a Plan, which features 20-odd black-and-white photos, many of Musk with her family, is a memoir/self-help book hybrid. Much of her advice is excellent ("If your children aren't used to luxuries, they survive well"). Just don't ask the resignedly single Musk about men--the one area where she admits to being planless. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer